Jamie leans close to her as he slides the homentashen into the display case. They’re assholes, he whispers. Don’t let them get to you, right?
No, she says, uh uh.
Good girl.
He winks at her as he heads in back, his empty tray gleaming like a shield against his chest.
I LIKE YOUR car. She has been practicing these words in her head for weeks, waiting for the perfect moment when the others aren’t around, when Elliott isn’t eyeing her, when his girlfriend, Fran, isn’t nearby whining about what time he’s going to get off work, her hand protectively held over her still-flat stomach. His schedule is a mystery, so she lip-glosses now before every shift. She lingers to admire the car on her way in to work, on her way home, whenever it’s there and the cousins aren’t around to hoot at her, always hoping he might suddenly exit the bakery, see her, offer to take her for a ride. It gleams like the shiny black part of a black-and-white cookie. He hasn’t spoken to her again, just smiled in a friendly way with those pretty bright teeth, those starry eyes, and once he tugged on her braid — just one now, down her back, more grownup — when he passed.
And she has him now, by the bread bins, he is all hers, his smile and his tray of loaves hefted high.
Yeah, thanks, he says. It’s okay. I can haul my speakers and shit, you know?
Maybe, she says, maybe I could come hear you play sometime. Everyone, everyone says you’re really good.
Oh yeah? he says, pleased. Sure. Sometime. Not on a school night, though. He winks at her again. Through his T-shirt sleeve she can see the hair under his arm, dark blond curls, as he swivels to go.
Fuck school, she says, surprising herself.
Yeah? he says. He stops, lowers his tray. I thought you were, like, a bookworm.
No way, she says. School sucks. She leans casually against the slicing machine, tries to slouch. I can’t wait until I’m out of there, you know?
Oh yeah? he says. He taps his tray, grins at her.
So yeah, like, anytime. I mean I could do anything, anytime. She’s pleased to hear herself say all of this, doesn’t know where these words have come from. I mean like now, she continues, I’m on my dinner break. She unties her apron strings, pulls it over her head, hangs it on the rack. She straightens up, glad she wore a thin T-shirt, one that clearly reveals the seams of her bra. I’d love to see your car.
Okay, he says, nodding. Sure. C’mon. He heads in back, and she follows. Her heart is happy. She will sit next to him in his velvet and black car and he’ll tell her about his music and how Fran is such a bitch and all his secret things, they’ll go have a cheeseburger somewhere and talk more, they’ll come back to finish their shifts and then later he’ll play guitar for her, drive her home even, no more taking the bus. She feels Elliott’s eyes on her as she follows toward the back exit. But Jamie stops at the chiller, unlatches its heavy door, and disappears inside without looking back. She is unsure for a moment what to do, nervously picks at a kaiser roll on a tray until she sees Elliott return to squirting out a pink basketweave design on a baby-themed cake.
She enters the chiller, startled as always by the slap of syrupy cold. Jamie is standing just inside; he holds out his hand and she gives him hers, still sticky from the strawberry tart she ate earlier. His hand is warm. She hopes she smells like strawberries. He tugs her past a tall rack of wedding tiers awaiting their roses, toward the far corner, behind stacked tubs of hydrogenated oil, and turns her to face him. Kiss me, please, she wants to say, but tells herself to just wait, that’s what he’s brought her in here for, isn’t it, to kiss her first? She licks her lips. He unbuckles his belt, unbuttons his jeans with one hand and places the other one on her shoulder. He wants her to kneel, she realizes, so she does, her jeans too tight around her belly, her knees, she feels her house key dig into the tendon of her crotch. Too many cookies, she thinks, I’m getting so fat. She’s suddenly worried he’ll touch her, hug her, he’ll hate my body, he’ll think I’m ugly, too big, too small, too flat. She closes her eyes and turns her face up, waiting for the kiss, his mouth, his tongue in her mouth, that’s what she wants, his clean toothpaste tongue and his detergent sugar smell.
She feels a bump at her lips and she opens her eyes. Rubber, that’s all it is, peachy and soft, but no, it’s real, a real kind of flesh she’s never seen, and she swallows. She tries to think of the right word for this, there’s only penis in her head, the only word she can say inside, but penis isn’t right, it’s like Biology or Health, the kids at school, they’d say dick, but that’s a stupid schoolyard word, there’s member from her mother’s books, she had to read those paragraphs a few times before she realized what a member was, not dildo, either, and this one’s real, warm, there’s a pulse, and hair, and an oniony human mustard smell. There’s just the other word, a word she can’t even shape in her head, let alone her mouth, she can’t get her mouth around that, no, not this wordless hot soft hard thing, but she opens wide for the thing she can’t say, feels him enter her dry mouth, pressing her dry tongue, it grazes her teeth and she instinctively opens more, feels him fill her then bump at the back of her throat, and she somehow gasps and swallows again, with him all in there, full and hard, her throat opens and closes around him, and he says Yeah. He slides out, then, Lick it, he says, and she’s empty and sad but does, lapping at him and around and around with her tongue, then he pushes back in full, slides out, slides in, It’s his cock, she thinks, yes, and the wet of her mouth makes the cock slide good, easy and slick in and out, glosses her widened lips, makes a slopping sound, makes her wet and loose all through, she feels the pounding not in her filled mouth but between her legs, that’s what’s empty, throbbing inside and damp and swelling up hard. She wraps her arms around his hips, lets him push in deeper, go faster, makes herself wider-open for him, for his cock his cock his cock and oh, he’s mine, he’s all mine and I’m all his, his, his.
Good girl, he says, his hands closing soft around her head, pushing her toward him with his slide, slide in, slide out, gently, he is so sweet, she feels him slide all out and suddenly be gone from her and it aches. But he raises her up and back and now she is seated on big sacks of meal. His hands are tugging on her T-shirt, twisting it up, she feels him dig inside her bra, her little-girl baby bra, she is so embarrassed, stiffens her spine, thrusts herself outward into his hands, they’re gripping her breasts, squeezing the flesh hard, Bakery Girls Knead It, yes, yes, her bra up around her throat as he grips her nipples, they’re raisin hard and chilled, he rubs at her, and she lifts her face up to him for his mouth. He pulls her back toward him, puts his cock, his cock, shiny slick from her mouth, tucks it between her breasts, pointing up at her, pushes her breasts closed around it, They’re too small, I know, she thinks, despairs, wants to apologize. But Sweet, he says, makes a sandwich of her with him the meat in the middle and her the tender soft rolls, he starts shoving, rubbing himself hard up, up, up, gripping himself tight with her breasts and she wants his hands other places, wants them squeezing the crotch of her jeans, wants them unbuttoning her and reaching down and in to touch her skin, her baby belly, her hot wet hair, wants his fingers spreading her open and raw, going inside her, groping there the way she does it to herself, rubbing the tiny hard spot then sliding fingers inside then doing both at once, rubbing, sliding, all the wet coming like a swell and burst of steam. Another hard shove rub and he clenches tight inside himself, clenches her hard, and she feels his gasp, the hot ribbons of him on her throat, her neck, her chin, she opens her mouth and swallows swallows and licks at it, gulps it down, gulping, hungry, it’s all hers, and then she’s suddenly released. She steadies herself against the meal sack. She wipes at her face, wipes her hand on the burlap. She hears a buckle. She feels a tug on her braid.